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Posted by: Neely Tucker
To celebrate the start of the 2023 season, the Library is pleased to announce a new digital collection: Early Baseball Publications. The collection, which will grow over time, provides online access to more than 120 early baseball publications.
Posted in: Baseball, Collections, LC Web site
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Mark Dimunation has displayed his love for rare books in print, onstage and on television since he was appointed chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library — the largest collection of rare books in North America — a quarter of a century ago, in 1998. He retires this week, telling stories about great books and great personalities he's come across during his tenure.
Posted in: Curators, Library Work and Employees, Rare Book and Special Collections
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
Carol Lynn Ward Bamford curates the Library's collections of more than 2,000 musical instruments, including the James Madison crystal flute that Lizzo played at a concert last fall, setting social media afire.
Posted in: Concerts, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Music, My Job, Preservation and Conservation
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
Lizzo set the social media world afire last fall by playing, in concert, a short solo on a rare crystal flute that once belonged to President James Madison. The flute is one of the Library's most prized musical instruments and a showpiece of the collection of Dayton C. Miller, the famed physicist, astronomer and major flute aficionado. The collection, preserved in a vault at the Library, is not just the world’s largest of flute-related material, it is perhaps the largest collection on a single music subject ever assembled — and it’s what drew Lizzo to the Library in the first place.
Posted in: LCM, Library Work and Employees, Music, Performing Arts, Preservation, Science, Technology
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
The Library wrapped up its tribute to Joni Mitchell on a high note last week with a conversation between the 2023 Gershwin Prize winner and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. In an exchange punctuated by laughter and ending in song, Mitchell detailed her unexpected evolution as a musical pathbreaker. The article contains a link to a video of the conversation.
Posted in: Concerts, Events, Gazette, Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, Music, Performing Arts, Women's History
Posted by: Neely Tucker
A priest, a detective and an impoverished poet might sound like the setup to a joke - but Father Duffy, Sergeant Ben Goldsmith and Tim Brandon are no laughing matter in the gripping new addition to the Library of Congress Crime Classics, "A Gentle Murderer" The landmark 1951 Dorothy Salisbury Davis novel, called "one of the greatest detective stories of modern times" by famed critic Anthony Boucher, is the most recent addition to the Library's series of crime novels that have fallen from popular attention.
Posted in: Crime and Punishment, Crime Classics Series, Library Work and Employees, Women's History, Writers
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
Jan Grinci, a reference specialist for posters in the Prints and Photographs Division, describes her work in researching, preserving and curating the Library's dazzling collection of posters.
Posted in: LCM, Library Work and Employees, My Job
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
The Library of Congress on Wednesday bestowed its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song on Joni Mitchell, the singer-songwriter best known for such 1970s classics as “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Help Me.” The celebratory concert included performances by Annie Lennox, Graham Nash, James Taylor, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Krall, Angélique Kidjo, Ledisi, Lucius and modern folkies Brandi Carlile and Marcus Mumford. It will air on PBS stations on March 31.
Posted in: Events, Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, Library Work and Employees, Music, Performing Arts, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The handwritten Esther scroll, inked onto parchment and protected by a cylindrical case of silver filigree, is a delicate work of beauty and religious faith, more than a century old. It tells the biblical story of Queen Esther of Persia and how she helped save the nation’s Jews from annihilation by a wicked ruler. The …
Posted in: Jewish American History, Library Work and Employees